Five Ways To Get In On the Deals in B2B Industry

Pitch Book News reports that

"Since the beginning of the year, PE investors have exited 129 companies through a sale to a corporation, according to the PitchBook Platform. The median deal size for corporate acquisition exits in 2010 YTD is $223.5 million with eight deals crossing the billion dollar mark, including Elevation Partner's sale of Palm to Hewlett-Packard (NYSEQ: HP) for $1.2 billion. Corporations appear to be most interested in B2B Products and Services this year, buying 34 PE-backed companies in the industry. Other industries attracting much interest are B2C Products and Services with 29 companies and Information Technology with 19."

Implications:  Companies are buying up healthy organizations from Private Equity Firms and that means opportunities for executives to lead these new SBUs.  How?

1. Keep in touch with the money flow in your town/industry.
2. Ask different questions of your network instead of the tired, old "who is hiring" question.
3. Think first.  What is the most likely next step for a target company?  Will they be able to buy a company from a PE firm?
4. Get connected to PE brokers.  Ask what B2B companies are on the market. Track these companies
5. Stay connected to PE firms.  They need to re-invest. Find out what they are doing.

Go East, Not West, Young Man!

The Robert Walters Asia Job Index is a real eye opener.

Horace Greeley

The percent change in job advertisements for professional positions placed from Q1 to Q2 is 31.52% in Hong Kong, 13.7%% in Sinapore, 34.27% in Japan, and 36.68 % in China (with 10 million job openings) for a total of 11M jobs add in April through June of this year.

Amazing!

The famous quote by Horace Greeley, "Go West, Young Man!" has to be turned 180 degrees to find new employement opportunties.

But I think that in the United States or developed regions like Europe, opportunties abound.  They are just different than how we traditionally see employment.  As McKinsey reported in their ten trends (see previous post on July 27, 2010, Organization of Networks - Part I), employment as we know it has changed for the executive/professional. 

Options include outsourcing, close sourcing, interim executive roles, networked pools, and other "nonemployee" roles can be found through digging for opportunities, rather than trying to find the traditional 7am to 7pm job.

What are you seeing in your world?  Have opportunties taken a different form?  Let's share.

PE Deals in Consulting Industry May Provide Opportunities for Executives

Pitchbook News, a weekly eZine from PitchBook Data, Inc., recently reported that...

148 companies in the Consulting Services industry have been involved in PE deals since the beginning of 2007, according to the PitchBook Platform. Deal activity in the industry is on the rise this year with 19 completed or announced deals so far, already smashing last year's total count of 12. 160 service providers participated in the deals. Credit Suisse was the most active, participating in 6 deals, followed by Goodwin Procter , Kirkland & Ellis and Ropes & Gray , each of which participated in 5. The most active investors in the space during the same time period include The Riverside Company (5 deals), DC Capital Partners (4), The Blackstone Group (3) and Vista Equity Partners (3).

Implication: opportunities for those who are connected to these deals/contacts.

Executive Actions: 

1. Use your network to connect to deal makers in the investor industry. 
2. Follow the money flow in your city and you'll find opportunities happening under the radar screen. 
3. Keep looking to your peers to give you information that you may not get online or in print.
4. Observe the trends by keeping connected to a variety of thought-leader reporting, such as PitchBook News.